Harley Benton HBZ-2005 Deluxe Series 5-stars Reviews

Beautiful instrument - fun to play

This bass is absolutely beautiful. It's a piece of art, especially for the price. Crazy The sounds are good, assuming that you're looking for that active Jazz tone. If that's your thing, then you're going to really like this. I'm usually more of a passive P-bass player, so this is great to give me something different. I chose to string this one with Elixirs and a high C to give me some better soloing options for when playing in a duo with an acoustic guitar, and I really like what I'm getting. I can see where one might want to change out the pickups, and I might look at that at some point, but I'm also struggling to find pickups which fit this 5 string configuration. It's not a big deal, but it could see where swapping out electronics could take this bass from good to great.

Amazing bass at an affordable price

This bass is fantastic. The neck is fast, and there's no B-string sag! The pickups sound great on their own, and when distortion is applied (Sansamp Bass Driver).

My only complaint is that I would've liked it to be string-through. The bridge is already setup for a string-through setup, but there were no holes in the body. I just personally prefer the tension of a string-through body.

Best value for my money

There's nothing not to like about this bass. At this price point I'm not sure you can get anything better.

Very good for the price

There is very little to complain about. The design is beautiful and in general it's very comfortable to play, especially for the price. The only "issue" I've noticed is a small bit of wood that bulges out a touch at the top of the neck, most likely due to the sanding process, but you don't notice it while playing. Overall, a gorgeous instrument that plays really well for its price.

High quality great price

So cheap considering instruments here in egypt and the quality is amazing!

Pleasantly surprised - great value for the price

I bought this bass over 10 years ago as my second 5 string bass and didn't regret it. I wanted a wooden natural looking neck thru body instrument to replace my old 4 string EKO/Camac (now quite rare) bass so I could move to the 5 string world with something I would also love aesthetically, and it ended up one of my best purchases in a long time.

It arrived in a cheap but well packed cardboard box; both string action and bridge were finely adjusted and all it needed to start playing was tuning the strings. The sound is clean and the electronics is versatile and quiet. Pots and knobs feel a bit cheap but they do their job and in many years they never crackled, however I usually don't make heavy use of them during play, so YMMV; tuning pegs work as expected and don't miss tuning even after over an hour of heavy playing.

Would I purchase it again? Yes, definitely, although the +50% price bump from back then could make it less appealing for others.

wow.

how do they make these so cheap. such great workmanship. would happy play one all day long. and I do

and I am

Great bass for a great price!

First impression was that I couldn't believe how good this bass looked. The wood it is made of is amazing. At band practice everyone loved how it looked. The bass plays amazingly well. Very easy to play and it was set up great from the factory. The sound is killer and compares to my $1000 Ibanez bass. Crazy good!!!

Amazing for the price.

Got a little grounding issue that had a little fixing but it travelled through countries so it's fine. Plays smooth. Some rough frets but nothing too bad

The bass is generally quite good.

The bass is generally quite good. For some reason, I came with a completely loosened anchor rod, so I had to tinker, removing the ringing of the strings on the frets. But as a result, I replaced the upper threshold, then the situation stabilized.

This is seriously greate guitar

Well... This bass sound pretty good. Very tasty, most bright and fat sound what i heard.

My current bass - J&D Jazz Bass with official Fender pickups.

If i compare them with each other...

On Harley Benton The neck feels much thicker. But i can't say: that is bad. This is strange for start and not habitually.

I play Metal mostly. And for really heavy music HBZ-2005 fits very well here.

Sounds good, looks good

It has a clear sound, plays pretty well and it has a killer look.

Now, it's not perfect, the frets ends were very sharp and scratched my skin whenever i played. Had to file them quite a lot.

The controls are a bit weird, not the most intuitive layout.

The bridge looks awesome, but some of the couldn't be lowered.

On the neck, you could feel with your fingers where the wood stripes are glued together.

However, with 30 minutes of setup, filing the frets, oiling the fretboard, setting the truss rod... etc, you get a very good looking and very good sounding bass.

Amazing bass

I bought this bass because I was learning and I did not know if I would get serious or not. Now I'm transitioning to a more "pro" bass and I cannot find much difference between the basses I've tried and my HB.

Amazing for the price

This is my first 5-string, and I am extremely impressed by it. It's just as beautiful as the pictures, if not more so. The only real aesthetic problem (and it's not really one) is that the saddle that came on the bass is slighty different than what was pictured.

Feature-wise, the EQ controls aren't in the order I would have put them in, but everything else seems great to me. If you turn the treble up on the bass or the amp, you will get some background noise as a result of the pickups, but that's just something you need to be aware of with single coils. Otherwise the sound is superb especially for the price.

Everything feels solid and well-built. The body is comfortable and the neck is much thinner than I would have expected, which I like. It also came pretty much tuned and with D'Addario strings, so I could start playing almost out of the box. This bass feels like it can compete with others up to $600 or $700.

I would suggest this if you're looking for a great all-around 5-string on a tight budget, or even if not, this is a steal at under $300.

Wow!!!

Harley Benton HBZ-2005 Deluxe Series

This Bass Guitar having great and banging sounds!

I'm using this on our Church services and it was fantastic comparing for my Yamaha 4 String Bass Guitar and a little bit expensive comparing for this 5 String of Harley Benton.

This Bass Guitar had a good look satin wood finish! and I love that uniqueness that most of guitars are glossy finish.

This is quite cheap comparing for the Branded 5 Strings but I'm not disappointed for the quality and sounds! I thought it will not meet my expectations, but it does! and more than enough!

Best 5 string for the price

The quality of this bass is superior to anything I've tried in a long time. I had certain doubts, but this is beyond belief. The construction is every bit as solid, as the one on instruments from the 1000+ price range. Even the battery slot is well made and unlike the situation with other instruments, it didn't have any wires hanging around in the cavity.

I honestly enjoy everything about the bass with two exceptions - the pickups don't work for me, aesthetically and I would prefer if it had straplocks. I did buy a set of those, but the actual price difference would probably be minimal.

Great 5 string at a bargain price

I've been playing guitar for ages but I've never owned a bass until I bought this one. I do a lot of writing / recording etc at home and thought it was about time I had one. I didn't want to spend a fortune on it, but I wanted one that felt nice and sounded the part on recordings in a variety of genres. After reading reviews here and looking through the pictures over and over, whilst scouring second hand options elsewhere and seeing what else I could get for similar money, I decided to take the leap and go for this...

Very glad I did! The bass looks as great in the flesh as it does in the pictures on here. It's all finished very nicely.

Feel wise, it's quite weighty, but the weight is balanced nicely and it sits well in the lap, it feels reassuringly solid. I haven't tried it standing up yet but I imagine it will balance fine there too. The controls are great; Very solid feeling and definitely not easily knocked once set. The indents on the pots are really handy too.... Only downside here is it takes a minute to figure out what each knob controls! Not the most intuitive layout but that's just my opinion I suppose and it doesn't really matter anyway, once you've figured it out. I'd tell you the order now to save the hassle but I've forgotten til I get it out again!

The active electronics do introduce some noise when boosting rather than cutting if you're playing into a very distorted / compressed signal chain but that's to be expected. It's only problematic when really cranking the EQ controls right up, which you almost certainly won't need to do! Otherwise, a little noise is always unnoticeable as soon as you start playing.

It's a fun bass to play! In my situation, as a guitarist converting every now and then, it's perfect. The action is nice and low, without loads of fret buzz out of the box. It sounds great for a variety of styles. It feels nice, it looks nice.... Great buy all round!

Since enjoying this bass so much I've now definitely got my eye on a few other Harley Benton guitars.... I'll almost certainly be ordering one of their tele-style models after pay-day at the end of the month. If this bass is anything to go by, they are very impressive instruments for the money!

Incredible bass for this price - and even better de-fretted!

I bought this as a cheap starter to get back into bass after a long break.

My expectations of a through neck 5 string for this sort of money were not high. Wow, I was so wrong.

This is a great sounding, great looking, well built, easy playing instrument. I was truly amazed at how good this was. It comes with good strings and the range of sounds that come out of the active electrics is impressive.

OK, it needed a good setup out of the box. The relief was too shallow and action too high (fpersonal preference) and the intonation was way out. This is the only reason for only giving 4/5 stars on quality. Probably unfair, you'd expect any brand new guitar to need setting up.

But it has since got even better - after pulling out the frets (and another setup of course), this makes an amazing fretless! I can't put it down - the Warwick GPS Corvette 5 that I bought to "replace" it gets less attention.

HOW IS THIS SO CHEEP!!?

When I looked at the price on this instrument I was absolutely stunned at what was on offer for o little money. Admittedly I did but the 'B-stock' version of this instrument so there was a sizable discount on the original price (€208). The first thing that really struck me was the tonal range this bass is capable of; tones ranging from the bridge pick up, tone down 'Jaco' sound, to the neck pick up, full active dub sound, to the tone up bridge and neck pick up blend (my favorite for slap) which gets a great thumpy slap sound; that's just a small few of the sounds this baby can produce, I'm still learning.

I did have to bring it to a luthier to have it set up as there was some fret buzz around the B of the E string and in a few other places, the fret buzz wasn't bad enough that it was audible through the amp but it was there enough that it bugged me when I was practicing. The set up cost me €10 and I've had no problems since. Really I think the action was just set too low when it was sent out to me.

As a bass to wear this is a really comfortable 5 string, allot of others have a problem of always sliding so that the neck is pointing down (just from the weight of the neck) but a combination of the way the body is styled and the weight of the wood being used seems to have stopped this happening.

Altogether, this is a great bass, with versatile tones, great resonance, nice playing feel, comfortable to wear and even looks good for very little money.

Pleasantly Surprised

I saw this and thought that for a 7 piece neck through active 5 string it was worth a punt but found it was actually a very good quality instrument, would highly recommend.